1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to contact centers, such as telephone call centers that provide telephone response services to individual and business subscribers worldwide. More specifically, the invention relates to a computer-implemented system for monitoring and analyzing activity within a communication contact center and for providing information from the analysis to agents and managers within the contact center for improving quality monitoring.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephone call centers are facilities for receiving incoming telephone calls and for responding to the calls by taking messages, interactively directing the caller to a preferred service or information provider, or providing advertising or informational messages on behalf of a sponsoring client. For example, a caller dialing in to the customer service department of a particular home appliance manufacturer may initially be presented with a recorded voice menu from which the caller may respond by entering the appropriate number on a telephone key pad for the desired department, service, or information. Such menus are included in automated attendant systems to provide multiple options to the caller to accommodate the anticipated needs or inquiries of each caller. The caller could also be queried to provided information, such as the caller's account number or the last name of a sought person. Such systems are known as Interactive Voice Response (hereinafter referred to as “IVR”) systems. Both systems generally also offer the caller the option of speaking with a real person, in which case the call is often placed in a queue and answered by the first available agent. Systems for controlling the queuing and routing of such live calls to agents are known as Automatic Call Distribution (hereinafter referred to as “ACD”) systems. Telephone call centers may be as simple as an alternative answering service for an individual during the hours the person is out of the office, in which case the individual can periodically contact the call center for messages. At the other end of the spectrum are call centers through which the caller can inquire about product information and ultimately order a product, charging the purchase to a credit account, all without ever having to enter a store. Call centers can also provide out-bound services in which the call center agents initiate calls to prospective customers and respond to earlier calls and inquiries. Such telephone call centers are generally described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,869 to Brooks et al., which is incorporated herein by reference.
As used herein, the term, “customer,” refers to both the individual calling into the call center for information or to access the available services and the individual who is called by the call center. An “agent” is the call center individual responsible for answering the customer's inquiries and directing the customer to the appropriate individual, department, information source, or service as required to satisfy the customer's needs, regardless of whether the customer or the agent initiated the call. A “monitor” or “supervisor” is the individual responsible for listening to the conversation between the customer and the agent, either in real time or after the end of the call while using a recording of the call, to review the agent's performance and to improve the quality of the customer's experience. The monitor may be a call center employee or may be a third party individual responsible for monitoring agent and call center compliance with certain procedures and standards. A “client” is the individual or entity that contracts the call center to receive or initiate telephone calls on behalf of and directed to the individual or entity.
For simplicity, call centers are hereinafter described in terms of handling in-bound calls, even though they can also handle out-bound calls.
While large manufacturers, service providers, and information providers have staffed in-house call centers to respond to the inquiries of their customers and potential customers, third party telephone call centers have been established whereby calls to several target companies may actually ring and be answered within a third party call center for providing a response, rather than in the locations or offices of the companies themselves. The company the caller is desiring to contact is identified to the call center agent by the telephone number and/or menu response entered by the caller. As such, the call centers may be located thousands of miles away from the actual sought manufacturer or individual.
The monitoring of incoming calls, along with the verbal responses of the call center agents, is a well-known quality monitoring and enhancement practice within telephone call centers. The transactions are reviewed, and the agents being monitored are counseled to improve the quality of the service they provide to the customer. Additionally, some of the conversations are recorded to comply with the requirements certain agencies and businesses face regarding the recording and archiving of transaction information, e.g., stock market trades. The monitoring can occur in real time while the conversation or telephone contact is occurring, or the verbal data and information entered through the telephone key pads can be logged or stored for subsequent review. Such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,914,951 to Bentley et al., which is incorporated herein by reference.
Specialized devices have been developed for the full-time and selective recording or logging of calls to a call center. Such an apparatus has been manufactured by Comverse Infosys, Inc. of Woodbury, N.Y., under the product name ULTRA. The ULTRA system provides for full-time recording of all calls, on-demand and event-driven-recording of calls for transaction verification (such as for sales centers), archival of voice data, and instant playback. The ULTRA equipment is installed within the call center, offers a variety of audio compression and archive storage options, and is accessible for audio data retrieval across a local area network (hereinafter referred to as “LAN”). Comverse Infosys, Inc. also markets its MENTOR software package for capturing call center data, including audio data and agent screen data, and for monitoring and scoring call center agents.
Referring now to FIG. 1, there is illustrated an exemplary telephone call center system.
Incoming telephone calls from customers 100 are received through the PSTN 50 and are processed by the PBX/ACD 102. The IVR portion (not shown) of the PBX/ACD 102 interacts with the customer to determine the nature of the call and the service or information requested by the customer. Although not shown in FIG. 1, the PBX/ACD 102 may include audio databases for directly responding to the customer's inquiries as entered by the customer speaking into his or her telephone or making entries through the telephone keypad. Should the customer indicate a desire to speak with an agent, the PBX/ACD 102 selectively routes the call to available agents operating workstations 104′. The conversations between the customers 100 and the agents are selectively recorded by the monitor module 106′ and stored in the database 108′. While all conversations may be recorded in their entirety, typically only a small portion of the calls (e.g., 4-10%) are recorded to save space on the call center database 108′; and, of those recorded calls, only a portion of the conversation may subsequently be reviewed. In a rules-based recording system, such as the one shown in FIG. 1, the recording rules reside in a rules database 110′ and control the recording of the conversations by the monitor module 106′. Personnel responsible for monitoring the calls may access the information stored on database 108′ through their respective supervisor workstations 112′ for evaluation of the performance of an agent at one of the workstations 104′.
The information gleaned from the telephone call is used by the supervisor or monitor to monitor the performance of the call center agents for identification of any possible training needs. However, the information gathered is limited to the audio conversation between the caller and the agent, any data entered by the caller through the telephone key pad, and the screen images viewed by the agent. Furthermore, while the subsequent monitoring can occur over a network, the monitoring agent must be set up with appropriate, often proprietary, equipment, speakers, software, and password access to monitor the activities of the call center agents across the network. In other words, the monitors and supervisors of the call center are usually restricted to locations where they can gain physical access to the call center's telephone center or local area network. Should the network be unavailable to the monitor or should the monitor encounter any difficulty with his or her network station 112′ or software, the monitor is prevented from performing his or her monitoring responsibilities. Additionally, the amount of information available to the monitor is very limited and cannot fully recreate the complete environment experienced by the caller and the agent during the course of the telephone contact. As such, the monitor is restricted in thoroughly evaluating the performance of the agent and in completely understanding the experience of the caller during the telephone contact. Furthermore, the monitors must constantly oversee the activity within the call center and must manually adjust the recording of the communications data based on whatever the monitors may perceive to be a is problem. Finally, the agents and supervisors have little perception regarding how they are performing and how the call center is functioning based on the amount of calls being received.
Furthermore, customer communications with businesses have expanded beyond the simple telephone and now involve a full range of electronic media, such as electronic mail, facsimile, and Internet interaction. Telephone call center systems are simply not designed nor equipped to process or manage the diverse electronic media and data with which customers and businesses can remotely interact. Accordingly, telephone call center systems cannot capture all the electronic data associated with a multimedia transaction in which the customer utilizes all the media resources available to fulfill a transaction. Nor, therefore, can the telephone call center effectively monitor the full range of media formats by which customers and businesses can effect communications. Similarly, the call center cannot dynamically respond to changing conditions within the center such that the recording of critical communications data is automatically adjusted and appropriate call center personnel are notified so as to maintain a desired level of service quality.